From the MCP Website:
“In this seminar, marketing expert Mary Virginia Swanson will provide insights into the most effective avenues for introducing your work to gallery and museum professionals. She will discuss the value of the national and international juried exhibitions, as well as portfolio review events such as FotoFest, Review Sante Fe, PhotoLucida, and key European festivals, as realistic avenues to industry professionals. Important gallery trade show such as AIPAID, Photo LA, and Photo Miami will be discussed from the perspective of helping artists determine which dealers will be most appropriate for their work.

Effective self-promotion materials will be shared with participants, as well as insights into conducting research toward compiling an effective mailing list. Professional practices necessary to successfully present your work will be discussed, as well as “talking points” when given the opportunity to sign with a gallery for representation.

Each participant will receive a copy of Ms. Swanson’s book, The Business of Photography: Principles and Practices (2007) as the seminar workbook.”

To register, contact BETH LEDNER in my office at: (520) 742-6311 to sign up. Discounts are given to students, and to MCP members. I look forward to seeing many of you there!

This month, Covering Photography is offering a slight variation on a theme. No, we’re not giving up on book covers, but click HERE and find twelve album covers. The photographers whose images are on these covers, listed in alphabetical order, are:

NEW YORK, August 27, 2007—The Museum of Modern Art presents New Photography 2007: Tanyth Berkeley, Scott McFarland, Berni Searle, the latest installment of its annual fall showcase of significant recent work in contemporary photography. On view from September 30, 2007, to January 1, 2008, in The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery on the third floor, the exhibition features 18 photographs and is organized by Eva Respini, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art. The New Photography series is made possible by JGS, Inc.
Twenty-two years after the first New Photography exhibition, the series continues to highlight the Museum’s commitment to the work of less familiar artists and seeks to represent the most interesting accomplishments in contemporary photography. Since its inception in 1985, work by 63 artists from 13 countries has been featured in this forum.

Explains Ms. Respini, “This year’s New Photography exhibition includes work by three artists-from the United States, Canada, and South Africa-working in a variety of techniques and across a range of themes. By focusing on outstanding individual achievements and maintaining a regular annual schedule, the New Photography series aims to suggest the diversity and international scope of contemporary photography.”

Tanyth Berkeley
The subjects of Tanyth Berkeley’s photographs include street performers, transgender women, strangers, and close friends, all captured in striking portraits that often challenge conceptions of feminine beauty. Featured prominently in this exhibition are nearly life-size portraits of individuals with whom the artist has a deep connection, each of whom possesses an idiosyncratic appeal: Linda Leven, an actress and former dancer; Rick Wilder, a rocker with a dandy fashion sense; Ariel, a porcelain-skinned beauty with a cascading mane; Claire, a regal blonde; and Grace, with an intensely furrowed brow. Grace, a frequent sitter and muse whom the artist met on the subway in 2002, appears in multiple photographs; her luminous hair and extraordinary features take on a painterly quality.
The sometimes mannered poses of Berkeley’s subjects impart a sense of theatricality to the photographs and also make visible the collaboration between photographer and sitter. In addition to using gesture and pose to highlight certain aspects of her subjects, Berkeley’s deft use of color and natural light stresses their uniqueness. With these portraits, the artist offers an alternative to images in consumer culture by celebrating beauty outside the mainstream, favoring the distinctive over the ordinary.
Berkeley was born in 1969 in Hollywood, California, and lives and works in New York City. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 2004 and recently held her second solo exhibition at Bellwether Gallery in New York City (2007). Recent group exhibitions include Greater New York 2005 at P.S.1/MoMA in Long Island City, New York, and White Out: Lighting into Beauty at the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art in Colorado (2005).

Scott McFarland
Scott McFarland digitally combines multiple negatives to create exquisitely detailed photographs that subtly record the passage of time. For Orchard View with the Effects of the Seasons (Variation #1) (2003-06), McFarland photographed the same view of an overgrown garden in Vancouver throughout the year as different plants bloomed and faded. He combined elements of these exposures to capture all four seasons within a single picture.
McFarland is interested in environments that are artificially constructed to appear natural. In a series of photographs made at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, a large panorama of the nursery contrasts with photographs of the cultivated areas of the gardens. The inconsistent shadows and impossibly uniform sunlight on some plants give clues to the artist’s digital interventions. Another artificial display is the subject of a photograph McFarland took at the Berlin Zoo, in which a keeper tends to porcupines as a young family looks on.
The work involved in creating and maintaining such displays is mirrored in McFarland’s artmaking. While his photographs maintain a sense of realism, they are composed through artificial means. By manipulating time and space to create a multilayered representation of the world, McFarland reconsiders the conventional notion that a photograph is a depiction of one moment frozen in time.
Scott McFarland was born in 1975 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and lives in Vancouver. He studied at the University of British Columbia, completing his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1997. Recent exhibitions include The Constructed Image: Photographic Culture, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto (2007); Acting the Part: Photography as Theatre, Vancouver Art Gallery (2007); and Clickdoubleclick: The Documentary Factor, Haus der Kunst in Munich (2006).

Berni Searle
Berni Searle draws on her personal experiences and memories to realize her visually sumptuous photographs, videos, and installations. For the series About to Forget, Searle began with a handful of her family snapshots, spanning three generations, and cut crepe-paper silhouettes of family groupings. When she submerged the cutouts in warm water and photographed them, the resulting forms lost definition as the red pigment bled into the water, creating an abstract evocation of the uncertainty of memory and the gradual fading of family ties.
Similarly, Approach describes an action that takes place over time. This work was made on mounds of discarded grape skins during the harvest on a vineyard in South Africa. The mounds, with their rich reds, purples, and browns, are made by machinery that crushes the grapes and ejects the skins from an overhead funnel. In the waning sunlight, the artist photographed herself barefoot, ascending and descending the peaks and valleys of this seemingly endless mountain range. Her grape-stained smock indicates the physical exertion of negotiating the rotting skins, which contrasts with the beauty of the landscape. Searle’s journey recalls the traditional and laborious winemaking process of crushing grapes with one’s feet, while alluding to the winemaking culture established by Dutch and French colonial settlers in South Africa in the 17th century. Her nuanced images reflect on her country’s tumultuous history, but they ultimately address ideas that connect to broader human experience.
Searle was born in 1964 in Cape Town, South Africa, where she currently lives and works. She studied at Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, and completed her MFA in 1995. Searle recently had a solo exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (2006-07). Other recent group exhibitions include Global Feminisms at The Brooklyn Museum in New York (2007), and the 49th and 51st Venice Bienniales (2001 and 2005).

SPONSORSHIP:
The New Photography series is made possible by JGS, Inc,” A Not For Profit Photography Organization.

I’m off to Atlanta this weekend to participate in the opening weekend festivities at Atlanta Celebrates Photography (SUNDAY) and to join a great group of industry colleagues as presenters at PDN On The Road. I hope to see some of you soon at one or both of these events!

My colleague Debra Weiss, marketing consultant to commercial photographers and I have prepared two new lectures that we are debuting at the PDN On The Road Series, coming to Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, New York and Los Angeles this fall. Our collaboration on these new presentations will offer participants a glimpse into fine art, commercial, corporate, graphic design, decor, licensing and other market segments.

They are:
on Day One: “Marketing – Ten Points That Will Drive Your Business in Today’s Market”
on Day Two: “Marketing – Today’s Marketplace: Presenting Your Work to Multiple Markets”

Two things in my inbox, from the e-newsletter Art Scene California:
An interesting exhibition opening on the Queen Mary in Long Beach this Sunday, September 30th, and next weekend’s FALL OPEN STUDIO at the Brewery in Downtown LA. Details follow:

Sun Deck Gallery aboard the Queen Mary presents:‘WOMAN: A CELEBRATION’
FEATURING 65 IMAGES OF 19TH AND 20TH CENTURY WOMEN BY THE WORLD’S GREAT PHOTOGRAPHERS
September 30 – March 2, 2008First Gallery Event & Book Signing: Sunday, September 30, 3pm

From the press release:
“LONG BEACH, Calif. – The Sun Deck Gallery aboard the historic Queen Mary in Long Beach, California, is proud to present Woman: A Celebration, an exhibition featuring 65 timeless images of 19th and 20th Century women, both well known and anonymous, by many of the world’s great photographers. Images of famous women such as Audrey Hepburn, Greta Garbo, Mother Teresa, Billie Holiday and Georgia O’Keefe are exhibited alongside equally compelling images of various unknown women in their everyday, often joyous, sometimes difficult roles.

The Exhibit, sponsored by Pepsi and Absolut Vodka will open Saturday, September 15, 2007, and run through March 2, 2008. The first of a series of public gallery events, featuring a gallery talk and book signing with Peter Fetterman, is scheduled for 2:00 – 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 30, with the program at 3:00 p.m. The Sun Deck Gallery aboard the Queen Mary is open to the public free of charge from noon until 6 p.m. daily.

Woman: A Celebration, is an elegant and thoughtful journey through the mystery of women in all their glorious diversity and moods, and is produced by the Peter
Fetterman Gallery and Pancho Barnes Enterprises, Inc. The exhibition is curated by Peter Fetterman with Dr. Lou D’Elia, and the gallery is designed by Michael Salazar.

Peter Fetterman’s hardbound catalogue of the show, photographic prints and other fine art books are available for purchase at the Sun Deck Gallery shop.

Woman: A Celebration is heartwarming and empowering, presenting a wide range of universally appealing images of women from the camera work of some of the greatest photographers of the 19th and 20th Centuries. When it made the first stop of its tour at the Orange County Museum of Art in 2003, it was hailed as “extraordinary” and “a wonderful place to be.” OPRAH Magazine said, “There is so much joy and whimsy and even holiness in the show that every photograph is a thrill.” Whoopi Goldberg wrote, in her forward to the catalogue, “these images make you want to reach out for the next woman you see – give her a big hug and be glad you know her.”

Peter Fetterman is a fine art photography dealer and collector based in Santa Monica, California. He previously edited and published a book on the photographer Cornell Capa and is currently preparing an upcoming exhibition and book in the Celebration Series, Child: A Celebration.

Dr. Lou D’Elia of Pancho Barnes Enterprises also produced and curated the Sun Deck Gallery’s first two exhibits, Lights! Camera! Glamour!, featuring the work of George Hurrell, and Rockin’ Hollywood featuring the work of Michael Childers. Architect Michael Salazar, also of Pancho Barnes Enterprises, provided design direction for all three exhibits and created the flexible new exhibit space that premiered with the Rockin’ Hollywood show (June 15 – September 3, 2007).

The two images featured in the exhibition graphics (Zoey Smith/Zbra Designs) show the diversity of women depicted in the show. Grace Robertson’s 1956 image, “Mother’s Pub Outing,” playfully presents ladies in dresses, hats and gloves on a roller coaster, in contrast with Chester Higgins, Jr.’s intense 1990 portrait of a veiled “Moslem Woman” in New York City.

Now permanently docked and celebrating 40 years in Long Beach, the Queen Mary’s operation and preservation are entrusted to the RMS Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, public benefit corporation. The new Sun Deck Gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of fine art photography and the exploration of the ship’s extensive photo archive. Proceeds from the Sun Deck Gallery benefit historic preservation, restoration and conservation of the historic ship’s art and interiors. The Gallery is located high atop the Queen Mary on the deck of the same name, convenient to historic exhibits, tours, shows and entertainment, fine restaurants, unique shops and leisurely promenades with panoramic views from the open Sun Deck that surrounds the Gallery.”

The Brewery Artwalk is a twice-annual free event designed to showcase Los Angeles Fine Artists selling gallery-quality fine art at studio prices. The Brewery Art Colony is so named as its three hundred twenty oversized artist lofts are industrial spaces converted from the former Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewery. Zoned for live/work, the lofts house hundreds of artists working in dozens of media – from painting, sculpture and photography to industrial design, architecture and experimental new media.

The Artwalk offers fans of fine art the chance to walk door to door amidst the 21 concrete and steel buildings that artists work in, on 20 acres in industrial Downtown Los Angeles. The Brewery features a restaurant and bar, commercial art galleries and 150 artist studios that will be open for your perusal and enjoyment. Artists whose work is in the collections of local and national museums share the stage with new talents fresh out of art school and avant-garde experimentalists pushing the boundaries of the very definition of art.

Somewhere in it all are the next great L.A. artists waiting to be discovered by you. Shopping for art at an artist’s studio downtown affords you the opportunity to meet the masters behind the creations you will treasure for years to come.

Be sure to check out the group show at the i-5 Gallery for a preview sampling of works by Brewery tenants.

This is an amazing annual event that impacts Atlanta and the Southeast is an extraordinary way.

“My Atlanta” is an amazing gift to the city! Here’s more about it from the website:
“My Atlanta is an opportunity for photographers of all ages and with all levels of experience to exhibit their work and compete for prizes. Everyone is invited to bring work to Piedmont Park on Sat., Sept. 29, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Pre-registration is not required. The theme for this year’s My Atlanta is Evolution of a City. This year’s judge is Jerry Cullum, Senior Editor of Art Papers and independent curator and writer.”

Be sure to download the Festival Guide here.

I’ll be in Atlanta participating in ACP by giving a lecture entitled “Finding Your Audience: An Introductino to Marketing Your Artwork” on Sunday, September 30th from 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Atlanta:
1447 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
404-881-1109

This lecture is free to MOCA GA members; $5 to non-members and $1 to students!I hope to see you there!

NOTE: Next week’s Portfolio Reviews have long been filled, with Reviewers and Photographers alike coming in from all over the country. Don’t miss participating next year!

Lastly – KUDOS to outgoing Executive Director ANNE DENNINGTON for her innovative programming and effective leadership. And welcome to newly appointed Executive Director AMY MILLER who comes to ACP from serving as Gallery Director at the Fay Gold Gallery in Atlanta. Amy, along with new Programs Manager Michael David Murphy, will no doubt build upon the great foundation that Anne has secured for this organization!